


too picturesque an image to control this time

by Caracalliope



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Roleswap, The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-19 03:57:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22704745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caracalliope/pseuds/Caracalliope
Summary: Meat Epilogues AU: Dirk comes to Rose for advice and solace.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde & Dirk Strider
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	too picturesque an image to control this time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silvereye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvereye/gifts).



Exhaustion sits heavy and damp on Dirk’s shoulders, constricting his breathing and also his vocabulary. His posture used to be like his daughter’s, gracefully deliberate and always prepared for battle. Now he is slumped across her velvet couch, formless, head in her lap.

DIRK: Have you ever cradled a fancy Santa in your hands? Knowin’ that you cracked him with your insufficiently smooth moves, but you’re still just a stupid kid and you’re not ready to face up to the shards?  
ROSE: Ah, no. Only one kind of bearded idol was tolerated in my house.  
DIRK: My psyche is the fancy Santa, ‘fcourse, but with each new day of fuckery, I keep thinking that my body is, too. I can’t get the awareness of pain out of my head. People keep asking if the headache’s a metaphor. I wish it was, but my head just hurts, Rose. I got it checked by an adorable-ass carapacian radiologist but they just said I was in tip-top god shape.

Her skin is cooler than his, and she rests a hand on his forehead. His pain rises, crashes like a wave against his forehead, and then it quiets down. Dirk breathes like a diver between one plunge and the next.

ROSE: Could it be psychosomatic?  
DIRK: First, I thought it was phantom pains from my beheadings. Or some kind of fucked-up symptom of heartbreak that nobody told me about. You never know with love, right? But I don’t think it comes from the feelings.   
ROSE: What feelings?  
DIRK: Guilt, confusion, a whole new ultra-tier of self-loathing. I think it all comes from someplace else, somewhere outside of me. I know this is tin foil baseball hat territory, but I preemptively want to point out that alien mind control does exist.  
ROSE: Didn’t Crocker have shares in the tin foil industry? But I believe you, Dirk.  
DIRK: Wait, you do?  
ROSE: Why wouldn’t I? You have no reason to lie to me.

And he hasn’t been lying - she has Seen every world where he slips from her grasp and unites with his alt selves without her guidance. Knows of his bitter loneliness in the worlds where he decides to conceal himself.

She also knows she could spare him this pain altogether, tell him the truth, take him as her apprentice. She could take all choices away from him, making sure he only does what is good. He'd appreciate it, possibly. But that wouldn’t be narratively satisfying, would it?


End file.
